Politics inserted in “Millionaire”?

A political row has broken out in Hong Kong over what some viewers regard as the insertion of politics into the local version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. According to today’s South China Morning Post, the show Wednesday night gave “Taiwan” as the answer to the question, “Which is the biggest island in China?” The Chinese government does not recognize the independent status of Taiwan, which has been the seat of the Republic of China since the Communist victory on the mainland in 1949. One Taiwanese woman living in Hong Kong told the SCMP that the issue of reunification should not be settled on a TV quiz show. “They shouldn’t just slip a political thing like that in there. I was emotionally angry with it.” Although itself reunited with China in 1997, Hong Kong functions under a “one country, two systems” policy. A spokesman for ATV, the Hong Kong television station that carries Millionaire declined to comment on the political implications of the question but insisted that Taiwan is indeed the biggest island of China.